Multiple teacher cuts are coming

The Cloquet school district is poised to cut 24 mostly teaching positions at a special meeting Friday, April 12, responding to lost revenue and evidence of declining enrollment.

Superintendent Michael Cary outlined the cuts during the school board’s committee of the whole meeting Monday. None of the cuts are tenured teachers, and the nonrenewals will amount to roughly $1.6 million in savings.

The district was responding to the end of what Cary called “soft funds” — grant-related state and federal dollars mostly from the sunsetting of pandemic-era funding.

“We have a lot of really good people here that we did not want to see go,” said Cary, who went through the cuts person by person to the board.

“My daughter has Ms. [Crystal] Jordan and she’s amazing,” board member Melissa Juntunen said, lamenting the loss of an elementary school instructor.

Out of professional courtesy, principals informed the teachers last week, before the cuts made the news.

“It’s really unfortunate,” school board chair Nate Sandman said.

“I really appreciate the work you’ve put into this — I know it’s tough,” said board member Ken Scarbrough.

Cloquet must exhaust the end of its pandemic era Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds before the end of the year. That $3 million across three years helped to create positions the district can no longer afford, Cary explained.

Furthermore, enrollment is declining, Cary said, which will result in less per-pupil state aid dollars.

This year’s kindergarten class is as much as 20 students smaller than historic norms, and the high school begins graduating this spring the first of four of its largest most recent classes. What follows are smaller classes that will reduce the enrollment of the high school in the coming years, Cary explained.

Cary called a reduction this year in kindergarten classrooms district-wide from 9.5 to 8.5 “the new norm” as birth rates in the city are “very low.”

While the cuts are coming Friday, Cary held out hope that new grants or other reprisals could yield a return of some of the lost employees.

“We’re trying to do everything we can to keep as many of these folks on board as we can,” he said.

Due to stipulations in the union contract aimed at preserving tenured employees, none of the cuts were tenured teachers.

Instead, they were teachers or staff on probation or early in their careers. In order to keep tenured staff, Cary and the principals had to shift personnel around based on their qualifications. For instance, teachers who were no longer working with students with special needs are moving back into that realm because they retained qualifications to do so. The middle school and elementary schools will see most of the results of the upheaval, Cary said. And because tenured teachers (making as much as $100,000) make more than those on probation, more cuts had to be made to make the lower salaries (roughly $70,000) achieve the necessary cost-savings.

“There were a lot of people shifted and moved and, ultimately, a large number of people cut,” Cary said.

Some measures required as many as three “trickle down” bumps in order to satisfy student needs and the contract with the union.

Class size goals will continue to be met in spite of the cuts, Cary said.

Cary added that the district is working on behalf of some of the people being cut, trying to get them soft landing spots in other districts.

“We know and understand and respect the work they’ve done for us and our students,” Cary said.

As a result of the cuts, “we don’t have many people left that aren’t tenured,” Cary said. “Future reductions could get a little convoluted if they’re needed.”

The cuts presaged a tighter budget for the upcoming 2024-25 school year — a budget with less wiggle room.

Normally, the district isn’t averse to budgeting with something like a $300,000 deficit heading into a new school year. The district usually estimates conservatively on revenues, Cary explained. That won’t be the case with this year’s budgeting, which will hew as close to balanced as possible.

“We’re cutting much closer than we normally do,” Cary said.